Living the Live in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta

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spiritual sense

You might consider Self-realisation as a moment of a sudden experience of Truth: finally the dots are connected. Before that moment there were just a few glimpses of a universal truth and now it can’t be missed: you have realised your true potential, Truth itself. The parts have become one piece. This is what I often read. You, the seeker of God, self-realisation or what you might name your path for ultimate knowledge, is often promised a step into light from darkness. That sounds interesting, but are you in the dark?

Perhaps you remember the string of lights in a Christmas tree. A whole year-long the lights were put back in a box, safely kept on a shell in the attic, and now, the next Christmas-time coming up, it refused to work. With a good touch of Christmas-stress you started to check every single light. Most of the time you would find one light not to be connected, preventing all other lights to work. You gave all attention you had and now it worked! From no lights at all into one huge shining colourful bright Christmas tree.

First you had no light and by fixing just one connection, they all would shine. All the lights on the string were depended on that one single candle that was on the run. In this case 99 of the 100 candles were functioning properly, but couldn’t come to work because they were depended of the one candle that had stepped out of the game.

This is what I often hear: just one courageous step and I will know. It is just the one step that is so hard to make. And it is true, in your world of Idea’s you are so much busy looking for that one lose candle that it has become part of the obsession. Fix the one and all will shine.

Candles (Photo credit: magnuscanis)

Waiting for mr 100

But is it? Is that the ultimate truth? Like there is nothing, just potential? Just the other 99 working lights ready to work, waiting for mr. 100? In this case you would say: I have everything ready in my house, waiting for the party. Everything is there. You are just waiting for the guests to arrive. Or like the string of lights is ready to invite the electricity to do its work. Still, this somehow suggests that everything, but one, is ok. It is ready and now you aim for the last candle, closing the dots.

Now at the same time this situation implies that 99% in your spiritual believe-system is depending on the 1 % that makes it to work. But why should you have 99% waiting for just 1% to make it function? Well this also happens when you download a file into your PC and the last 1% holds and wait to be downloaded. In this case the 99% has no use, but in your human potential it is something completely the other way around. It is just your Idea that you need one step to realise your true potential. In fact you already made that one a long time ago.

The World around often seems so hard, so cruel. While at the same time we feel so gentle, so humble, ready to share our love with everything that visits our Life. I agree that sickness, poverty, unemployment, bankruptcy, divorces and death are not the life-experiences we prefer but, at the same time, we all get our fine share of crisis while being on planet earth. What can we do about it? Or better, do we need to do something about it? It is a question I often get. A quest of Life I remember myself so well. I have been there. All the way. Nearly all of us invite confrontation in life, and then we ask ourselves this question: why is this world not more to my liking, not more how I would have wished it for? Why can it be so harsh at moments?

The good part is: there is an explanation to everything. Let us start where we all start to live our problems. Yes, we all because we all learn to act in this world like being a person in a body, called whatever is our name. When we are at the age of 2 or 3, in the short period when we have learned the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’, we also know our name, speaking it out loudly while pointing at our chest. From here we find our-self as a separated person in the form of a body as part of the world in which we live. Basically this is the identification where most of us will stay till death ends this manifestation. In fact our name, and this yes or no, are the result of identification. An identification that will come up as the setup for our defenses to survive in an outside world that, acts unexpected and not always in our favor.

Worlds Apart (Photo credit: Sony200boy)

We go to school, learn skills, get jobs, a career, a partner, children, a house, health-insurance and a pension-plan: from children-playground to huge castles with sometimes even an empire. The bigger our castle, the better defense we have, the more power we think we need to withstand Life. It sounds harsh but, mainly this is what we do. This is our life: we just want to survive in a world that can and will bring us unexpected disasters.

We might be lucky and build up a castle with the best defenses of the world. Somehow there never even shows up an enemy near the gates. Life begins and ends like a field of flowers. It happens. We all know one or two like that. Unfortunately its just for the happy few of us because, usually our invaders are stronger and more cunning than we are. They exactly know how to take down our defenses. They exactly know how to press the button to open the gate. Just one single event in a split of a second and our defenses will go down. We usually immediately start to repair our walls and canons. Now even stronger with more escape-routes. We take other jobs, other partners and everything that we need to feel ourselves more comfortable with. We even sometimes invite a more spiritual path to understand the meaning of Life. Again unfortunately we just start to check that same invading world that, a moment ago has taken down our walls. While first we now should ask ourselves the question: why did we build that castle in the first place? The realisation that our bodily appearance, as an object in the middle of a world of other objects, is already our biggest defensive castle. It is still one giant step too far at that moment. And here we rebuild again and, again.

No, first we try to become friends with the world. We invite the world in our life. From problems we learn, we call them challenges and so we start to refurbish our houses with furniture from which we secretly hope it will last a life-time. We give them names like feelings, heart, blessing and connection. All pondered with affection. From now on we share our power with the world. Our new defenses we call love and acceptance. We have given up the power trip by not fighting every unwanted phenomena that enters our life. We have found a new way to deal with life-events, to embrace them. Good? Yes but, just for some.

Sometimes we get struck by lightning and there seems no escape. Nowhere to go and nowhere to come. No escape? Is there really nothing at that very moment of loss. No there is not. Better, this having no escape, no tools left to rebuild our castle, is our freedom! Our loss can become the beginning of a new adventure. THE best adventure of our live is ready to embark now.

Standing on a beach, looking over the vast ocean, you ask yourself the question: what can you do with all the water, as far as your eyes can reach and beyond. You immediately start to use buckets in all shapes an seizes to lift the water out of the ocean. And how many buckets you will use during your life-time, the ocean will keep the same shape. This is what you do while building up your life out of a thousand ever-changing forms. You are constantly in the process of reshaping. A little bit of this, and a little bit of that. And yet the water in your buckets remains the same, unchanged, a whole life long.

One day, busy collecting your buckets with water, tired and fed up you suddenly give up on it. At that moment you start to look at the ocean as it is. No need to lift up your buckets with water any more. Till then…..buckets…..with water.

Q: I am feeling uncomfortable reading your last article* where you write about that we all look for some sort of special moment. A moment where we reach a definite point of understanding. Like we call it reaching enlightenment or self-realisation. Just to find out there is not really such an ultimate moment and, still there is at the same time.

A: Why did it make you feel uncomfortable?

Someone’s going to get a wet surprise. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Q: Because it makes me realise I am still looking for definite answers on ‘who I am’. For me it is like getting deeper and deeper into the matter, every moment of my life. My life is build on this quest and some day when I have realised the answers, there will be a sudden understanding. It was a kind of road with an end and now you make me feel the road has no end.

A: The road is a circle. Look at your uncomfortable feeling. Go deeper into it.

Q: It puts me on hold. What to do next when there is no special moment to be reached? At least not as in an ultimate goal to be reached.

A: You are used to work with goals. Look at your life. As a little child from the moment on you started to see yourself as Karin*, a little girl in a big world full with other people, you already unconsciously had started to set up defences. This being a person was and is the defense. It looks like a comfort-zone. A place where you can stash all your toys, feelings and idea’s. All safely set into a structured life. This all gave you a profession, a partner, a house, a pension-plan. And then so around the age of 35 all of a sudden you ask yourself: is this all there is? which on itself is a happy moment but, again you make it part of your safe and structured Life. Now enlightenment has become a goal. A new toy to desire for. Hopefully Santa will deliver it this Christmas.

Q: What is wrong with that? Like 24/7 this quest is putting a spell over my life. Everything I do in my life is build upon this quest. I am full of it. And now you say I am just asking for my present?

A: My last article made you feel uncomfortable? Well, happy I am. In our tradition* confrontation is a blessing. You tell me that it made you stand still on your path?

Q: Yes. I mean…hmm, so I am just busy walking in circles? Still I can’t say I give up on my search to get a final realisation of who I am. I can’t.

English: Saint Petersburg woman carrying buckets of water on a yoke, near Leningrad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A: No you can’t because, you realise that this whole life, build upon the survival of the persona is making you feel miserable in the end, no matter how much new buckets with water you pull out of the ocean to decorate your life. On itself there is nothing wrong with a good bucket of water but, it will never give you the ultimate satisfaction you are looking for.

To make this clear to you I will tell you more about the struggle for life I have been through till I finally dropped the last bucket of my shoulders. It will give you clarity*

* This will be in my next weeks article *Karin is a fake name *Advaita Vedanta *

Is it so natural to wake up in the morning, finding your clothes on the chair where you left them? You find yourself in the same bed, the same spot in the same room. The same body, the same you. Nothing has changed. The night has gone and the day-light is inviting you to become active. That is what we know, repeating the same experience over and over. Creating an existence of reality. But is it so natural? I got a question from someone.

Q: Every morning I find myself being the same me, the same body on the same spot as where I went asleep for the night. Lately I think: how self-evident is this actually?

A: You wake up, aware of the same body, the same you, because You want it to be like that. What do you remember of your first weeks, months, being ‘ in’ this ‘ same ‘ body?

Happy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Q: Nothing. Looking at some childhood-pictures bring back some memories of the moments the pictures were taken. Then I’m about 2 years of age.

A: What do you think made your body to wake up in the morning. In the same bed, the same spot as where you left it?

Q: My guess is, that it had its sleep. The body has its own rhythm.

A: Good. Your body has its own rhythm. And although you can’t remember anything about the first few months of your life, your body was already there according your relatives that can testify that.

So you already were around it seems. Point is: You can’t remember! So who is the one that remembers and knows it is around now?

Q: That is a part of me, my consciousness, or consciousness itself that let me realise I am here, alive. I am aware of me!

A: You are consciousness itself. True. It has always been and will always be. So even in the first months of your bodily existence it was already there. So what made you ‘ forget’ this first stages of your Life?

Q: My brain wasn’t so well-developed, maybe?

A: NO! You were not yet identified. Better, you were not aware being around! There was no Idea of being a you. There was no Idea of a you in a body amongst all other bodies in a daily repeating world!

Q: Why wasn’t I aware of this?

A: Simply because you were not afraid to die. There was no one to die! Slowly but certain you, the watcher, awareness, got involved in the Idea of a separate you. You start to be aware of others! Of a world around. You create your bodily identification. Realise that before all this, you had no body! Now you realise your body, and by then in separation, it got its own rhythm, and started to save itself from the first moment on. The heart, the lungs, everything was working to reach the next moment in time. It was programmed to survive. We just live with the Idea not to die. That is your Identification. You as a separated body trying to live forever.

Happy baby Emeth (Photo credit: Tim & Selena Middleton)

Q: So the Idea of time and body, related to each other, is just there because I let it happen? Again and again?

A: It is this Idea of a separated individual that needs to survive death, that lets you live the bodily experience in the first place. Give up this separation, realise you are always around, body or nobody. I guarantee that you will start to realise your true nature stronger and stronger. And this without the fear of death.

It is already a few days ago that I was pleasantly surprised by the notification that ‘ The Who ‘and ‘ Kate Bush ‘ would act live during the closing ceremony of the olympics in London. Specially Kate Bush got my attention. In my teens and early twenties I was full into Symphonic Rock and other synthesizer-composers. Bands like Genesis and Yes were on the top of my liking. I loved to play their songs on keyboard myself and never thought there would be anything better than that into music.

When Peter Gabriel left Genesis and Phil Collins turned the band more into a mainstream tho still symphonic band, I got surprised when Peter Gabriel made a song with pop star Kate Bush I got a bit shocked: how could he! I had a growing interest for the grand piano. Interest that went from Jazz, towards classical music over the years. Self playing Piano without any sheet-music was more or less my way to open my Heart for many years.

Overtime listening back the older songs of Genesis or Yes I still knew why I was so thrilled by them when I was young. But I also started to be convinced that Kate Bush probably has one of the best voices since early recording times. And now she didn’t show up at the closing ceremony, like she had not performed on stage in about 29 years or so. Still making records, but not performing.

Rocket Man (song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A deep ongoing connection

In an article on Kate Bush some scientist compared her to Mozart who also was very young composing ( Kate Bush started at the age of 12). I did not need anything else to know why impressive talented artists have hard times to find a way to connect with their audience besides just composing in oftentimes volumes hardly met by anyone else. My favorite on the Grand Piano, Keith Jarrett, is another good example of artists that are always in some stream of producing. Sure, he performs on stage now and then, but dropping a needle by some spectator in the audience can let him stop playing his on stage improvised pieces. Great artists have a deep ongoing connection with themselves. And they are aware of that. They don’t need a world for an audience. They have themselves. And they just need to express themselves on and on. This behaviour does not fit in a mainstream world.

My teacher, Alexander Smit, once approached me when I was playing the Piano and asked me: ‘Ronald can you explain where this music comes from’? Good question! I loved to sit down and I always let my fingers decide what to play. Now my teacher left me puzzling with for me a Koan. Sure I could come up with answers like the Universe is trembling, we are sound itself or it is coming from my heart, it is direct. Well, fill in the gaps, but none of them would point to a fulfilling answer.

It is not a 2-way traffic-lane. It is a circle!

Last night I heard Gustav Mahler‘s 5th. For me this piece is beyond words. I remember when I saw a large Piece of Kandinsky in the National museum in Budapest, when I heard Osho talking about Enlightenment for the first time, Peter Gabriel performing Biko, Egberto Gismonti touching his guitar, Edward Witten explaining his theories on the universe. What they have in common is the pure Beauty within. It is perfect. One single note, one drop of Paint, or one new word could turn a masterpiece into nothing.

Something created in pureness is straight from The Heart. Not your Heart-chakra. No it is The Reflection of YOU. When you meet Beauty, you become silent. It knocks you of your feet. You become in awe! It is not the painting of the Mona Lisa itself, it is YOU recognising YOURself. Immediate, with no escape. Is there something called taste, or preference? Sure, THE Heart, YOU, will show itself in a thousand varieties. Still it is YOU meeting YOURself, every time you are touched by something in the world of objects, or by sharing your own talents. Music and Poetry, it doesn’t come from you or the Universe. YOU ARE THAT. Now I hope you can see that YOU are always on the move finding ways to express YOU in connection. It is wonderful, and so thrillingly delicate. Just enjoy the arts like you enjoy the giggle of a baby or the smell of a rose. You have far more to give than you have ever expected to share. There is no world outside YOU that you will need to give you some credits. YOU are that world Be creative. You have so much to give.

Now it is time to realise ‘who’ you are. In fact now it is the only moment you have. This is the opportunity to realise who you are, every split second of your life! Not next year. Now. It is on the tip of your nose. And still many of you follow a road in time to get somewhere: waiting for some spiritual big bang to happen. . First you have to work hard, then you might get what you want to have. If you need more time, no worries. There will be a ‘ next life ‘ with again plenty of time to finnish the quest for Life. This time-related thinking is a huge trap all seeker will have to face and challenge.

A: How do you see your progress towards your enlightenment? Getting there?

Osho (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Q: I know you try to catch me into something.

A: Why should I? I mean it serious. I want to know how you think about your own progression!

Q: Every time I think it’s getting clear ‘who I am’ there seems more left to discover. At least it feels that way. For instance I still keep making endless unwanted Identifications with my life. Its is too hard to realise myself all the time. Permanent I mean. Somehow I know, that’s for sure, but it seems not enough to make a final ‘jump’.

A: This is really enough to know who you are. I agree that it is very hard to leave the position of the person, or the idea of an ego behind. The mind is cunning, even when there is no mind. :.)). It is you, the Idea itself that creates a you struggling to become enlightened in timeline.

When I put the question to the table: how are you doing on ‘your ‘ path to enlightenment you all try to explain me that there are still many things left to find out. We love to read and talk about great masters, like Buddha or Osho. I see more quotes of them both then you yourself have spoken words in your entire life. True, these great masters were wonderful, but they are gone. They are dead. I understand why you love to read them, but at the same time you idolize them when it comes to a spiritual Life. You often adore them so much that you use them to create new obstacles to instant realisation. I am more interested in the person who sends the quotes around than the teachers themselves.

Q: Still I am looking up to them, They are such good examples of great teachers. I still love to listen to the great talks of Osho. They inspire me. It is like I feel so much more at the point of coming home when I hear him talking.

A: Put all books and tapes aside and start realising yourself: now. You all act like hikers going for the horizon. It is always far away, but one day. You will never ever get there. There always will be a horizon. There always will be a new opportunity, a next life probably. You surely will need a hundred lives to reach the status of the great Teachers. It s always in the future. So let me ask you again: do you realise now who you are?

Q: Hmm, yes, but….

A: Stop walking!

Q: How?

A: This moment, this very second is all you have. Everything has gone. Just this very moment is present. Realise that. No time, no space, no Idea’s. Leave them out. be silent for a while and tell me what you see now.

A: Great. wonderful. Stay like that. This silence is still seen by you. This inner-peace is still felt by you. There is still a feeling of someone watching over all your non-actions. Go more into that. Take in the position of the watcher. Be the watcher and then become active. Grab this with whole of your heart. Get drunk into this active watching. There will be a moment you will stop running and you give up on looking. You will realise into awareness that YOU are awareness.

‘Use your first impulse’, be receptive. It’s some advice you get when you want to know what Intuition is. Now you are still full of different thoughts, but when you start to meditate, you become at ease. Then you will get struck by lightning now and then and you will get answers to all of your questions. It sounds promising. So why not? There is just one big problem to it. When everything becomes clear and receptive, you won’t be available to accept the newborn skill we like to call Intuition. Let me explain this to you in this conversation.

Q: Is it true that on the path of self-realisation you get more open to direct answers on all sort of questions. Does your intuition become more awaken?

A: Its impossible!

Q: why?…Your answers can be pretty direct and very much to the point on a questioners situation!

A: I still tell you it is impossible that you become more receptive to direct responses on the path of realising YOURself. On the contrary, there will be no you left to accept the newborn skill. Let me give you a question in return.

“Lets say you suffer from illness. You are standing in front of a garden. There is a variety of a thousand plants available. Only one can give you the cure. How would you know wich one to pick? “

Q: I would meditate a while till I would feel wich one to choose.

A: That is what you are learned to do. You start to relax yourself, no thoughts and then all of a sudden you would go for it. But no, that’s not even half way, sorry. Look at animals. I love cats: when they feel sick in their stomach they start eating grass. Who told them to? It is amazing how animals can cure themselves with the correct plant. It is not about instinct. It is about direct response. My cat doesn’t think, he responds. There is no in between. There is no meditation. There is no Intuition.

Saab 95 SportCombi Sweden (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Q: So what would you call direct response then?

A: It is 20 years ago I bought my first SAAB. I had been to Sweden on a wonderful trip and suddenly I exposed myself to all kind of impressions about Sweden. There was Sweden on TV, on the radio, the newspaper, I knew a swedish girl, blond of course, Sweden was all around in the center of my attention. How amazing. Perhaps it is a sign! I am in tune! A friend of a friend was driving an old SAAB. I drove it a few times. And there my desire to have one myself was born. I didn’t realise that time it was just the cunning mind that lured me into one. Soon enough I had my first SAAB and I really thought this was the best car in the world. But is that true. Is it?

With the kind of coincidences I called Intuition those days my preference for SAAB was born, but with that knowledge I would never have picked the correct plant like I ask you to do now. Remember its one out of a thousand plants.

Q: So what to do then?

A: Yes, it is correct that on the path of self-realisation instant Knowing, more often shows up. It is beyond intuition. It’s about Life presenting itself in an immediate fresh way. You and the view are one at that moment, undivided. Today I realise my SAAB didn’t find me. It was my Idea of a desire that found a SAAB.

Standing in front of the garden a plant would pick me. It’s not that I would be particular fond of just that one plant amongst a thousand others. No plant would step forward and present itself. Instead I would KNOW. For instance, immediately a view of a plant would show up like a vivid unexpected memory. It would be something about healing plants. I would have been reading about plants years ago, waiting for my check-up in the dentist office. That memory would become so alive and present that I even would remember every single detail of the waiting room. The other patients, the magazines. The presence of that view would be so strong that it had become like a giant stone, stopping any other move. I would take no action to move it. Without hesitation the plant was picked out of the thousand other plants. In one single moment.

It was all about the plant presenting itself with a vivid undoubtedly strong presence that would have faded away every other possibility in existence. Now you also realise how amazing animals are. Observe them, they are pure.